{"id":150736,"date":"2025-09-17T16:21:07","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T16:21:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/150736\/"},"modified":"2025-09-17T16:21:07","modified_gmt":"2025-09-17T16:21:07","slug":"the-origin-story-of-stevie-and-lindsey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/150736\/","title":{"rendered":"The Origin Story of Stevie and Lindsey"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tWhen Stevie Nicks<\/a> and Lindsey Buckingham<\/a> released Buckingham Nicks in 1973, they were just a couple of nobodies. Two hippie kids lost in L.A., doing an unfashionable folk-rock flower-child record. Nobody bought it. Nobody cared. Some might have heard it as a promising debut, others as a flop. But it\u2019s safe to say that nobody heard it and said, \u201cNot only are these two of the planet\u2019s greatest songwriters, this is an album they\u2019ll keep arguing about for the next 50 years!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tBut in that way, as in every other way, the world underestimated how much drama these two had in them. Buckingham Nicks has taken its rightful place in history as their origin story for the ultimate rock & roll dysfunctional romance. The couple recorded it before joining Fleetwood Mac<\/a> \u2014 before the fame, before the shawls, before the drugs, before anyone knew how much exquisite torture they\u2019d keep dragging into all our lives forever. It\u2019s just the Ballad of Stevie and Lindsey, back in the early days, when they didn\u2019t even need three other lunatics in the band to make a cosmic emotional mess.<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter the couple joined Fleetwood Mac for classics like Rumours, Buckingham Nicks became a footnote in their story. It\u2019s been a rare collector\u2019s item for decades, a lost gem never released on CD. Most of their fans never even heard it. But it\u2019s finally back in this long-awaited reissue. No hits, no bonus tracks \u2014 just a charming little American beauty of a record. You can hear these two lovebirds learn their craft, alone in the tall grass, doing their stuff, with nobody to impress except each other.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor years, it seemed crazy to hope this Buckingham Nicks reissue would ever happen. They\u2019ve spent years promising it, un-promising it, denying it, battling over it in public. But the exes\u2019 long-running love\/hate story<\/a> finally exploded in 2019, when the band kicked out Lindsey. (What other band could manage to break up onstage<\/a> in the middle of accepting a MusiCares award as humanitarians of the year? Only these guys.) It looked final, especially after the tragic death<\/a> of Christine McVie.<\/p>\n

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\n\tBut it was a shock this summer to see matching social-media messages from Stevie and Lindsey, teasing this project. They posted lyrics<\/a> from \u201cFrozen Love\u201d \u2014 the first move they\u2019d made together in years. On one hand, we\u2019re all grown-ups here, and we know rock vets don\u2019t necessarily do their own social media, right? But on the other hand, we also know that nobody speaks for Stevie unless Stevie says so. Hell, she\u2019d show up in public wearing sweatpants before she\u2019d ever let any of her team go rogue about Lindsey, a.k.a. Mr. Rulers Make Bad Lovers. So it looks like these two have sucked us all right back into their music, their madness, their whole glorious saga \u2014 just as they always do.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThat musical chemistry is loud and clear on Buckingham Nicks. \u201cWe write about each other, we have continually written about each other, and we\u2019ll probably keep writing about each other until we\u2019re dead,\u201d Nicks told me <\/a>in 2014. \u201cThat\u2019s what we have always been to each other. Together, we have been through great success, great misunderstandings, a great musical connection.\u201d Listening now, you can tell they already knew what they\u2019re doing. Lindsey is one California guitar boy who learned his tricks from Brian Wilson \u2014 he\u2019s into verse-chorus-verse tunecraft, not sloppy jams. Stevie flexes her cowgirl side \u2014 they dedicated the album to her wild-ass grandfather A.J. Nicks, who played her country records when she was a little girl.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tThey wrote the songs in L.A., after moving together from San Francisco \u2014 she worked nights as a waitress, while he sat on the couch, smoked hash, and played guitar. They met in 1965, at a teenage party where he sat in the corner strumming the Mamas and the Papas\u2019 classic \u201cCalifornia Dreamin\u2019.\u201d She walked over and sang along. \u201cI just threw in my Michelle Phillips harmony,\u201d she recalled. \u201cHe was so beautiful.\u201d Considering all the sexual\/chemical disasters in the Mamas and the Papas, this song might seem like an ominous way to meet \u2014 except Lindsey and Stevie went on to make Michelle and John Phillips look like total amateurs in the California-nightmare department.<\/p>\n

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\n\t\u201cCrystal\u201d is the closest thing to a famous tune on Buckingham Nicks \u2014 they redid it on Fleetwood Mac\u2019s self-titled 1975 album, slightly overshadowed by Nicks\u2019 other two contributions. (Those would be \u201cRhiannon\u201d and \u201cLandslide.\u201d) There\u2019s the finger-picking instrumental valentine \u201cStephanie,\u201d the jazz standard \u201cDjango,\u201d and the seven-minute showstopper \u201cFrozen Love,\u201d one of the only official collaborations these tortured poets ever wrote together. Their friend Waddy Wachtel played guitar, alongside session pros like Jim Keltner and Jerry Scheff. Waddy\u2019s big brother Jimmy did the artists a favor and took the cover photo, presenting them as a wide-eyed hippie couple in the Garden of Eden, before shirts were invented. (He later did classic covers like Bruce Springsteen\u2019s The River.)<\/p>\n

\n\tThe result was a total commercial flop that nobody noticed \u2014 except for Mick Fleetwood, who recognized greatness when he heard it. In 1973, Fleetwood Mac was just another washed-up band of English blues hounds, scrounging for gigs, years past their Sixties heyday with their original guitar genius Peter Green<\/a>. When Mick heard the album, from producer Keith Olsen, he figured maybe he could hire this Lindsey Buckingham guy to give the band a little taste of California sunshine.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut Lindsey had to make things difficult \u2014 which turned out to be his specialty. He refused to join unless they also brought in his girlfriend, even though the band already had another female singer-songwriter. No matter how much trash people talk about Lindsey, you have to applaud this heroic gesture of loyalty \u2014 he was willing to throw away his entire career rather than sell out Stevie. Mick could have laughed in his face \u2014 who did this punk kid think he was, playing hardball with the rock stars? But he decided to give in and hire them both. It\u2019s one of the only rational decisions Mick Fleetwood ever made.<\/p>\n

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\n\tAs everybody knows, the pair took the Mac to megastar level with classic songs about breaking up, making up, packing up, shacking up, and wreaking endless misery upon each other, along with the rest of us. Rumours just gets more famous all the time, as chronicled in Alan Light\u2019s excellent new book Don\u2019t Stop. Meanwhile, Buckingham Nicks got forgotten by history. In their iconic 2012 he-said-she-said interview<\/a> with Rolling Stone\u2019s Andy Greene, they totally contradicted each other about reissuing it. \u201cNext year is the 40th anniversary of Buckingham Nicks,\u201d Stevie said. \u201cAnd we\u2019re hoping next year to get the record out.\u201d She suggested doing a live Buckingham Nicks tour, calling it \u201ca sparkly, special, extra present.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut for these two, sparkles only happen when the house is burning down, and they couldn\u2019t get their heads together in time to make it happen for the 40th or even 50th anniversary. As Lindsey lamented, it \u201cmakes us the anti-Eagles, in terms of never, ever being on the same page.\u201d\u00a0Yet there\u2019s something so beautifully poetic about finally reviving it for its 52nd birthday \u2014 a round number would be the pragmatic adult business move, and what fun would that be? Having these songs out there in the world again is a historic occasion to celebrate. If you listen to Buckingham Nicks in 2025, you can hear all their combustible chemistry, even in their young and innocent days. And you can hear why these two have spent the past five decades making the lives of music fans \u2014 not to mention their own \u2014 so much messier. No doubt we would all lead more peaceful, civilized, emotionally stable lives if this album never existed. But that\u2019s all the more reason to be thankful that it does.<\/p>\n